Originally, the destruction wreaked on the outposts bordering the neutral zone, as established in the episode "The Neutral Zone", was intended to have been committed by an insectoid species which, during the production of TNG, were revised to become the Borg. (For further information, see 'Q Who' story development)

Starfleet immediately began preparations for a possible Borg invasion. Admiral Hanson returned to Starbase 324 to discuss strategy with Starfleet Command. Starfleet imposed a fleet-wide standing yellow alert, and warned all Federation and allied outposts. That evening at 1900 hours, the USS Lalo departed Zeta Alpha II on a freight run to Sentinel Minor IV. At 2212 hours, Starbase 157 received a signal from the Lalo, reporting contact with a cubical object. The signal was cut off mid-transmission, and no response was received to further hails.

"...We have engaged the Borg."

Upon receiving this information from Admiral Hanson, the USS Enterprise set a course for the Lalo's last known location. With Starfleet reinforcements at least six days away, the Enterprise was on its own. En route to the coordinates, contact was made with the unknown vessel: a Borg cube. News was relayed to Admiral Hanson, who had begun to assemble a fleet to combat the invasion. The Borg demanded that the Enterprisecaptain, Jean-Luc Picard, beam himself aboard their vessel for an unspecified purpose. After a brief exchange of fire, the Enterprise retreated into the Paulson Nebula, with the Borg vessel close behind.

Hiding in the dust cloud, the Enterprise and her crew prepared for the inevitable resumption of conflict. Attempting to force the starship out, the Borg launched magnetometric-guided charges into the nebula, causing minor damage to the Enterprise. Picard ordered the ship out of hiding, and in the ensuing attack, he was captured by the Borg, who then left at high warp, en route to Sector 001 and the core of the Federation.

The cube easily shrugged off the Enterprise's assault with the unwilling aid of Picard's knowledge, and resumed its course to the Sol system. The Enterprise was forced to stay behind, having suffered extensive damage to its deflector array and warp core. In the meantime, Admiral Hanson and Starfleet Command had hastily assembled a fleet of forty starships, with more on the way. The Klingon Empire was in the process of dispatching warships of its own to assist in the defense, and the possibility of requesting support from the Romulan Star Empire was even considered. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II")

The battle

In 2367, around stardate 44002.3, the cube entered the Wolf 359 system. Locutus hailed the assembled fleet, ordering the ships therein to disarm and escort the cube to the Sol system. Immediately thereafter, the fleet engaged the Borg.

Locutus, armed with the assimilated tactical knowledge of Picard, directed the battle from the Borg side. (DS9: "Emissary") After bare minutes of combat, the fleet was faced with utter defeat. Admiral Hanson attempted to rally the remaining ships to launch a last-ditch assault, but his ship was destroyed shortly thereafter. His final words were to Captain Riker of the Enterprise, whom he contacted briefly during the course of the battle. Communications were cut off in the midst of this transmission, and no further transmissions were received. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II")

The remnants of Admiral Hanson's fleet in the aftermath

Ultimately, thirty-nine starships were lost, with a total loss of nearly 11,000 lives. Many people were assimilated. Only one starship managed to escape the disaster. (TNG: "The Drumhead")

At least one civilian transport craft was caught in the battle. The ship was heavily damaged and had to evacuate its crew and passengers via their escape pods. The mother of one Starfleet officer was on board. The rest of the craft's passengers were most likely assimilated, though it is unknown if Locutus' ship did this, or if they were assimilated at a later date. (VOY: "Infinite Regress")

In the scenes depicted of the battle, Starfleet engaged the Borg cube in lines of battle. This would allow Starfleet ships to attack in formation without fear of damaging friendly ships. However, in this case, it simply allowed the Borg cube to pick off the Starfleet ships one at a time (as it did with the USS Melbourne, USS Saratoga, then presumably the USS Yamaguchi and USS Bellerophon next). In Star Trek: First Contact, when engaging a second cube, the Starfleet learned their lesson and instead opted for a "swarm" tactic. As reported by Data after the arrival of the USS Enterprise-E, that cube had sustained heavy damage – something not even closely achieved at the Battle of Wolf 359.

Aftermath

The Borg cube is destroyed

Following the battle, the cube resumed course towards Earth, completely undamaged. The Enterprise, having finally completed repairs, raced to catch up to the Borg. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II") In preparation for a Borg invasion of Earth, a state of emergency was declared on the planet. (DS9: "Homefront") Brushing aside the last line of defense by easily destroying a flotilla of Mars Defense Perimetersentry pods, the Borg cube took up position in Earth orbit. However, using the recaptured Locutus and his link to the collective mind of the Borg, the Enterprise crew managed to plant subversive commands to deactivate and destroy the Borg ship, in essence turning the tables on the Borg. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II")

Although the outcome of the invasion could have been much worse, the result of the battle was nothing short of disaster. The loss of such a large number of starships left the Federation unprepared for any new sustained conflict. (TNG: "The Wounded") Commander Shelby took command of a special task force to rebuild Starfleet, but returning the fleet to previous deployment levels was expected to take up to a year. (TNG: "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II")

In 2367, Admiral Norah Satie used the Battle of Wolf 359 as a means to question Captain Picard's integrity, during an inquiry board on Romulan subversion. She implied that Picard's relations with the Borg had led to the battle, and hence he was untrustworthy. (TNG: "The Drumhead")

In 2369, Picard again was painfully confronted with the consequences of Locutus' actions, as he met Commander Sisko for a briefing while the latter took command of Deep Space 9. Sisko was, on that occasion, only barely able to contain his disdain for Picard, whom he blamed for the death of his wife, she having been lost in the battle. (DS9: "Emissary")

In 2370, for a few nights around the time of the fourth anniversary of the massacre at Wolf 359, memories of the battle and the death of his wife caused Benjamin Sisko to suffer a bout of insomnia. These painful recollections were subconsciously triggered by the anniversary of the battle. (DS9: "Second Sight")

The stardate given in "Second Sight", 47329.4, suggests that the episode took place only a little over three years after the Battle of Wolf 359, although the anniversary would place it in early 2371.

In 2372, Benjamin Sisko's father, Joseph Sisko, remarked to his son that the threat of a Dominion invasion of Earth had frightened the population of the planet to a degree not seen since the Borg scare. (DS9: "Homefront")

In 2373, Commander Chakotay encountered the Borg Cooperative, a group of Borg drones whose members included many who had been assimilated at the Battle of Wolf 359 but who had later been liberated, thanks to a malfunction. (VOY: "Unity")

In 2373, in the run-up to what was to become the Battle of Sector 001 involving another Borg cube, Vice Admiral Hayes ordered Captain Picard, now commanding the USS Enterprise-E, to stay out of the upcoming battle. Despite Picard's protestations, it was felt that he would add an "unstable element to a critical situation", due to his experiences as Locutus in the Wolf 359 crisis. Eventually, Picard opted to ignore his orders and entered into the fray, proving that instead of being a liability, his experiences were rather an asset in that battle. (Star Trek: First Contact)

In 2379, when Picard found himself in a similar predicament aboard the Scimitar, he was again painfully reminded of his Borg experience when Shinzon taunted him with the remark, "What do your Borg friends say? Resistance is futile." (Star Trek Nemesis)

Parallel universes

In one quantum reality, Picard was killed during the Borg incident and Riker succeeded him as captain of the Enterprise-D, with Worf as his first officer.

In another quantum reality, the Borg had completely decimated the Federation by 2370. A battered Enterprise-D, which was likewise under the command of Captain Riker, was one of the few remaining Starfleet ships left. The Riker of this reality was desperate not to return to his universe, after the crew had escaped from it through a quantum fissure. They attempted to stop Worf from sealing the fissure. Their Enterprise-D was destroyed, due to warp corecontainment field failure, when another Enterprise-D attempted to disable the aforementioned warp core. (TNG: "Parallels")

Depicting the battle

Wrecked Nebula-class USS Melbourne

The same, now nameless wreck, in a window of an escape pod

The depiction of the battle in "Emissary" was originally much more elaborate. DS9's visual effects supervisor Robert Legato was instructed to compose the battle footage before live-action production commenced. He recalled, "It was fun to do because I was allowed to make it up from scratch; there was no backlog of stock footage for it. The script said that they were right in the middle of this big fierce, ugly battle, and I had tons of debris in all the shots. Ships that were burning, on fire, flying past the camera. I made sure that all the debris had the correct names on it, the names of the ships that were mentioned in 'The Best of Both Worlds', so the episodes would tie together." Unfortunately, Legato had to re-composite the footage, as the decision was made to shoot the live-action as if the ships were about to enter into the battle. "I had to go back and take all the extraneous ships out. It was a heartbreaker, because it was a lot of work and very good-looking stuff–much bigger than anything seen on a TNG show." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, pp. 17-18) Legato had used some debris stock footage from the "The Best of Both Worlds" episode, but virtually all of it had to be left out, save for a fleeting shot of a hulk seen in the window of Sisko's escape pod as it left the Saratoga. That shot was previously used as the burning hulk of the USS Melbourne in "The Best of Both Worlds", as identified in dialog spoken therein. In "Emissary", however, it was that of a nameless hulk, as the name Melbourne was now usurped by the Excelsior-class vessel, destroyed a few scenes earlier on. Still, it has the distinction of being the only studio model, besides the Borg cube, present in both depictions of the Battle of Wolf 359 and its aftermath.

Depicting the aftermath

A variety of new "kitbash" starship classes were constructed to depict the floating wrecks in the aftermath of the battle, which included the Freedom-class, the Niagara-class, the Cheyenne-class, the Challenger-class, the Springfield-class, the New Orleans-class, and the Nebula-class. (Of all these starship classes, only the Nebula-class went on to make further appearances.) The Freedom- and Niagara-classes were constructed by Greg Jein, Inc., using that organization's own production assets. [1] The other classes were constructed by Ed Miarecki[2], using AMTStar Trek model kits (No's 6618 and 6619). The ships that were created by Miarecki were embellished with custom-made parts and appropriately modified and battle-damaged by Michael Okuda. [3] Likewise, the Mars Defense Perimeter sentry pod was also a kitbash, this one constructed by Rick Sternbach, who used parts of submarine model kits to create the pod. [4] Though not discernible on-screen, Okuda did fabricate names and registry numbers to be applied onto some of the models, "I had custom rub-ons, called INTs, made. Not decals, but yes, they did have names and registry numbers. The Melbourne, Kyushu, and Chekov were specifically labeled as such because of the script references to those ships. I didn't know about the re-voiced name (Tolstoy) until I saw the final episode on the air, so I didn't do a label for that ship." [5]

Despite lasting only a few seconds, the scene in which three sentry pods are destroyed while the Borg cube passes Mars entailed a lot of work, such as the sentry pod having to be multiplied and "destroyed" in post-production. The scene was particularly challenging because it involved so many different elements that had to be composited together. Robert Legato, who served as a visual effects supervisor not only on the DS9 episode, but also on the TNG one, observed, "If it's a battle sequence that involves three or four ships, the work goes up in geometric proportions. For ten seconds of screen time, you've shot four or five days. That's a big shot. It has Mars in it, it has the starfield, the three ships blowing up, and the Borg ship flying towards us and away." This partly explains why, at that point in time, it was decided not to show the battle on-screen. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 22, No. 2, p. 33)

Uncertain starships at Wolf 359

The following is a listing of ships that were either referred to in canon or mentioned in valid resource material by production staffers as having potential connections with the battle, but are not canonically confirmed as having such.

Constitution-class primary hull wreck in front of a Galaxy-class nacelle

The script of "The Best of Both Worlds, Part II" states Admiral Hanson's ship was a Galaxy-class starship. [6] This would be supported by the fact that his message to the crew of the USS Enterprise-D came from a Galaxy-class battle bridge. There was also a free-floating Galaxy-class type of nacelle seen in the debris field, though several other classes use similar nacelles as well.

A scene cut from the aired version of "Emissary" mentions the USS Gage in dialog, ordered to attack the Borg cube with the Melbourne and the Kyushu. [7] Although this line did not make it into the episode's aired edit, the Star Trek Encyclopedia states the ship was involved in the battle and was an Apollo-class starship with the registry NCC-11672. The USS Roosevelt is stated to be an Excelsior-class starship with the registry NCC-2573 and the USS Tolstoy is stated to be a Rigel-class starship with the registry NCC-62095. A statement quoted by Captain Kathryn Janeway in "Scorpion" from Captain Amasov leaves it open to interpretation if the USS Endeavour was involved in this battle or another unknown skirmish with the Borg, prior to 2371. The Star Trek Encyclopedia (3rd ed. pp. 135, 604) states this ship was a Nebula-class starship, likely involved in the Battle of Wolf 359, and the sole surviving ship.

As to the ship listings of the participants in the battle, Michael Okuda remarked, "The various 'mystery' ships in the BOBW2 listings in the Encyclopedia were all ships that were either referred to in dialog, or were models that were filmed for the 'graveyard' scene. We did not make up any specifically to flesh out the Encyclopedia, although we (the production staff) did NOT come up with a definitive list of ships in the battle. I was tempted to try to develop one, but it occured to me that future episodes might need to 'remember' a previously forgotten Wolf 359 ship for as-yet-unwritten storylines, just as the DS9 pilot did with Sisko's ship, the Saratoga." [8]

Continuity

The Star Trek: Voyager episodes "Unity" and "Infinite Regress" refer to people being assimilated during the battle and subsequently being returned to the Delta Quadrant, perhaps suggesting the presence of an undetected second Borg vessel which returned to Borg territory. In fact, "Infinite Regress" suggests that Seven of Nine personally assimilated at least one of those people.

While the Klingon starships mentioned in dialog (specifically, in Hanson's pronouncement, "We've mobilized a fleet of forty starships at Wolf 359 and that's just for starters... the Klingons are sending warships..." [9]) were never seen on-screen during the battle, in "Unity", when Chakotay entered a neural link with the Borg Cooperative, he witnessed a battle between a Klingon squadron and a Borg cube of the same type that Starfleet engaged at Wolf 359, the squadron faring little better than its Federation counterpart.

In "Dark Frontier", the Borg Queen states that she was present at the battle, a fact confirmed by Picard's memories of her, as shown in Star Trek: First Contact. When Picard asks the Borg Queen (in that film) how she survived the battle, she replies it is sad that he only thinks in "three-dimensional terms." She is later on similarly also portrayed as surviving the total destruction of her own personal ship in "Dark Frontier".

Apocrypha

According to licensed but non-canon sources, the following Starfleet ships also participated in the battle:

In the 1994Malibu ComicsStar Trek: Deep Space Nineissue #6, the USS Kyushu and the USS Melbourne were depicted as an Excelsior-class starship and a standard-configuration Nebula-class vessel. It was not stated which was intended to be which. The canonical Kyushu was a New Orleans-class ship. Also, starships USS Hood, USS Potemkin, USS Reliant and USS Yorktown were stated to have been at the battle. In the 1997Marvel ComicsStar Trek: Voyagercomic book contained in issue #10, a story entitled "Ghosts" deals with survivors of Wolf 359, trapped in a temporal rift. Three Miranda-class ships (one with a "roll bar"), and a dozen or so Federation starships of unidentiable class were depicted as being at the battle, as were a Nebula-class, a Galaxy-class, and an Excelsior-class ship. Also, at least one Klingon Bird-of-Prey, at least three K't'inga-class starships and one Vor'cha-class ship were seen fighting the Borg cube. The USS Melbourne was stated to have been Admiral Hanson's ship.

In the Doctor Who crossover miniseries, Star Trek: The Next Generation - Doctor Who: Assimilation², the Battle of Wolf 359 is seen in three issues, first in issue 5 as a flashback and again in issue 6 and 7, when Doctor and his companions travel back in time to the Battle of Wolf 359 to recover a copy of the Borg central archive from the Borg Cube during the battle. In issue 5, a Galaxy-class starship and four others with somewhat similar hull configurations are seen approaching the cube. In issue 6, three ships are seen attacking the cube, two appear to be Ambassador-class and one Excelsior-class. The cover of issue 7 depicts the wrecks of two Constitution-class ships, one New Orleans-class ship, one Ambassador-class ship, one previously unseen class ship, and two unidentified ships. The magazine itself depicts a Galaxy-class ship attacking the cube.

The video game Star Trek: Borg has Q sending the player back in time to this battle to prevent the destruction of the Excelsior-class USS Righteous, which (at the time) was assumed to have been destroyed. The game culminates with the player and the ship being sent to the present by Q, after the player has averted the ship's destruction, thus allowing the timeline to be preserved and give the Righteous the chance to gain a unique amount of information about the Borg. According to the video game Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - Crossroads of Time, the Ambassador-class starship USS Kadosca was destroyed in the battle. According to the video game Starship Creator, the USS Victory also participated in the Battle of Wolf 359. Purportedly, the Victory was able to escape total destruction but suffered heavy damage, with the ship's first officer also being killed.

The 2008 novel Greater than the Sum confirmed that many people were assimilated during the battle but, since the Borg cube had only a certain number of drone slots, they were sent back to the Delta Quadrant on that ship's Borg sphere. In the Star Trek novels that William Shatner wrote with the Reeves-Stevens, the Battle of Wolf 359 also occurred in the mirror universe. However, this battle was between the Terran Empire and the Klingon-Cardassian Alliance. The Terrans were routed, and the Alliance bombarded Earth, vaporizing the Great Lakes and other landlocked bodies of water.

Star Trek Online features a mission wherein the player, aboard the USS Saratoga, is sent back in time by Q to prevent the death of Benjamin Sisko. The player can also go to Wolf 359 and view a memorial to the battle and its victims. [10]

For the Star Trek World Tour, a chart listed the names of 26 starships that fought at Wolf 359 was on display. Only the Roosevelt has been mentioned in canon as a ship that fought in the battle. The USS Pueblo has also been mentioned in an okudagram in "Eye of the Beholder", but not in connection to the battle. The Falcon was mentioned in the script of "Too Short a Season" as one of the ships Mark Jameson had served on. [11] Other than the names, there was no information on each ships class or registry. [12] The additional 25 apocryphal ships were:

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